Many industrial processes require the grinding of materials to fine particles either as raw materials or as an intermediate or final product. The materials to be ground might include coal, stone, metal ores, crystalline chemicals, etc. The grinding or pulverizing equipment is usually exposed to severe conditions both due to the nature of the materials and the restraints of the environment. These equipment considerations are likely to include the following: abrasive raw materials; high energy input requirement; toxicity (leak proof containment); vibration; explosive or combustible characteristics; large volume/mass rates with low profit margin processes; and around the clock/long term operations.
These conditions often mandate the construction of the equipment such that thick-walled, abrasion resistant, high strength materials are required to confine the process materials within a grinding zone thus limiting access to the internal components that are most susceptible to aggressive wear, damage and/or degradation. With many of these processes being quasi-continuous, any down time that interrupts the process is very costly and a major consideration in the economic viability of the plant utilizing the equipment. But the condition of the grinding zone components must be known to assure equipment performance and process reliability of the production runs yet indicate timely, component specific maintenance requirements with the minimum of unavailability.
Many of the maintenance practices and timing intervals on such pulverizing equipment have been derived from historical experience with scheduled overhauls based either on accumulated throughput of the raw material/product or on the run time. This history-based practice can have significant error with avoidable costs from the premature expenditure of manpower and replacement of expensive parts that have remaining life. Worse yet, the reactive maintenance could be after-the-fact with premature failure having been due to accelerated wear or other unanticipated damage. This latter situation normally incurs major production shortfalls with unacceptable maintenance costs and delays in return to service due to the short-term parts acquisition and/or the unscheduled manpower requirements (i.e., overtime or contractor augmented work force).
It is also known to put monitoring equipment on various components of the pulverizer and to collect data there from on a periodic basis. After a number of data collection events, it is then possible to determine potential areas for maintenance. However, prior art data collection devices have not been able to format the data in a direct and user-friendly format. Moreover, testing in this manner was done on a piecemeal basis and a real-time analysis of the operation of the pulverizing equipment was not available. Moreover, no known systems allow for system-wide monitoring of pulverizer units utilized in production settings or other industrial applications. Accordingly, there is a need for such a monitoring system that allows for real-time analysis of pulverizer units singly and/or collectively.